Gail Bowen continues to enthrall with her masterfully compelling storytelling in Book 17 of her nationally bestselling Joanne Kilbourn series, combining a modern urban family with a gripping, satisfying mystery.

As Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their soon-to-be seventeen-year-old daughter, Taylor, rush through the rain from their cottage to their car, the Thanksgiving weekend they just spent at the lake with Zack's law partners is already slipping away, burnished into memory as pleasantly as the hundreds of other weekends the Falconer-Shreve families have shared at Lawyers' Bay. Thoughts of the weekend past will now focus on the future and be prefaced by the words "next time."
Within weeks, a triple homicide will rip apart the lives of those related to the lawyers who, at the end of their first year in law school, only half-jokingly styled themselves "The Winners' Circle." Dazed by grief, Joanne will seek answers to an impossible question: "Why did they die?"
The facts behind the suicide of Christopher Altieri, known by his law partners as "the conscience of The Winners' Circle," appear to provide insights, but for Joanne those insights raise new, unsettling questions. Knitting this powerful narrative together is Joanne's unshakeable belief that the only thing worse than knowing is not knowing.

Gail Bowen’s bestselling mystery series featuring Joanne Kilbourn will number an even dozen titles with the publication of The Nesting Dolls in August 2010. The first six books in the series have appeared as made-for-television movies with world-wide distribution. Winner of both the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award and the Derrick Murdoch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Crime Writers of Canada, in 2008 Bowen was named ’Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist’ by Reader’s Digest. She was selected as oneof "The 100 Most Popular Contemporary Mystery Authors" for an upcoming Library Unlimited reference book.

Gail Bowen's profile page

Praise for Gail Bowen and the Joanne Kilbourn series:
• "Remarkable . . ." --Toronto Star
• "In all of Canadian crime, Joanne and her creator are among the most dependably enduring." --London Free Press
• "The reliable Bowen virtues -- deftly drawn characters, unusual twists and turns of plot, plenty of authentic details about contemporary Canadian life, and, of course, the irrepressible and genteel upper-middle class sleuth, Joanne Kilbourn. . . . Confirm[s] Bowen's growing reputation as 'the queen of Canadian crime fiction.'" --Winnipeg Free Press
• "Regina author Gail Bowen has crafted such character studies that one wants to linger with them, to watch their lives unfold, to bask in the warmth, strength and wisdom of Joanne's character. . . . Although most of Bowen's awards are in the crime-writing genre, her own gift is as a storyteller, a gift she fortunately shares with readers." --Vancouver Sun